March Pets of the Month
This is Skuggi (pronounced SKOO-gee), playing in his back yard and wearing his round plastic tag.
Thanks to Heidi M. of Seattle, WA for this cute pic!
And this is Jazz, showing off her paw jewelry tag while posing nicely for this photo.
Many thanks to Melissa Osentowski of Omaha, NE for this great pic!
Thank you to everyone who has submitted pictures of their pets! If you have a great picture of your pet (showing off our tag would be nice!), you can submit it here.
If you haven't seen your picture submission in our newsletter, check out our facebook page. Once there, you can see lots of pet pics, submit more and chat with us or other pet fans!
Obi's Tale of Survival
On a Monday morning last month, Tanya Cassell Pardy loaded up her car with her boys, twelve-year-old Joshua, and nine-year-old Johnathan and their three-year-old Shih Tzu Obi. They had been visiting her father and were on their way back home. It was a sunny winter morning, the roads were clear, and there was no reason to expect anything but a pleasant 360-mile drive. But wintertime in Newfoundland, an island near the easternmost tip of Canada, means the weather can change quickly. It did that day. Tanya was driving on the Trans-Canada Highway, and traffic was moving along near 60mph when suddenly, the skies darkened and the wind began to howl. Heavy snow started, and they found themselves in a whiteout.
"It was instant. It was unbelievable how it was sunny one second, and then I couldn't see anything the next," Tanya said.
As visibility fell to a few feet, she immediately slowed. But not enough. By the time she saw the stopped semi-trailer truck directly in front of her, there was nothing she could do. They slid and crashed. Before they could even think about what had happened, the vehicle behind them slammed into the rear of their car.
Experts remind us that after an accident on a highway, almost always, the safest place to wait is in your vehicle. But there are instances where that may not be the case. This is one of those instances. Tanya decided that they needed to get out of the car before the next vehicle piled into them. She yelled for the boys to get out quickly. People from other crashed vehicles were gathering in a safe area away from the wreckage. They began screaming for the family to run. An 18-wheeler was barreling in way too fast. Tanya and Johnathan ran to one side, and Joshua and Obi ran to the other side. The truck plowed between them, straight into the wrecked cars, compressing them into the semi-truck in front of them into an unrecognizable tangle of twisted steel.
After the truck came to a stop, Tanya could barely breathe. Then she saw Joshua peek across the wreckage from the other side. He was okay. As she ran over to get him and bring him over with the group, Tanya began to realize that something was very wrong with her foot. It was broken. At the same time, she noticed that Obi wasn't with Joshua. They called and looked for any signs of him, but he wasn't around. It wasn't safe to be on that side to keep looking, so they went to wait with the others.
Traffic finally came to a stop but not until 15 trucks and cars had piled up. Six people were hurt, 2 with life-threatening injuries. In the oddly quiet aftermath, Tanya and the boys searched through the tangle of cars looking for any sign of Obi. There was none. She wanted to keep searching, but she knew that it was time to get the boys out of there. Tanya had called her father who drove the 30 miles from his home until he found himself at the end of a long line of stopped cars. Tanya made her way to his car on her broken foot with her boys but no Obi.
It was three days of doctors, and insurance forms before the family was finally able to leave Tanya's father's home. There'd been no word of Obi, and worse yet if he was still out there, frigid, -20 F arctic air dropped down over the area. Thursday night, finally back home, Tanya decided to post a notice on Facebook about Obi. Everyone in the province had heard about the pileup, and now they all shared the story of the missing little dog. Word spread quickly, but the family was afraid that Obi hadn't survived the ordeal.
"To be honest, I posted in hopes of getting his body back so we could get some closure," she said.
Two days later, Saturday at 5 pm, just before sunset, a couple happened to be driving by the crash site. They scanned the edge of the woods, and something in the snow caught their attention. Could that be the missing dog? They stopped and got out to investigate. It was a little dog, but he ran into the woods as they attempted to get close to him. They called Tanya, a six-hour drive away. Within an hour, her husband Dean was on a plane. His flight landed near his father-in-law's home, and the two drove to the accident site, arriving in the dark a little more than 3 hours after the call. Their high hopes were bolstered when they found pawprints in the snow. They followed the tracks into the woods but lost them where they joined a snowmobile trail. Their hopes dwindled as time went by and the temperature dropped. Frustrated and cold, they went back to the truck. They phoned Tanya with the disappointing news but vowed to be back first thing in the morning.
After hanging up, Dean couldn't leave; he decided to go have one more quick look. Dean went back into the woods alone calling Obi's name. After only a few minutes of calling, he thought he heard something. He held still, listened, and called out again. A weak bark came back. His heart pounded as he repeated calling, waiting for the reply, and then shining his flashlight in the direction of the bark. And then Dean saw him. Covered in snow and ice, very weak and seemingly not able to move. But he'd found him!
Other than being very cold and hungry, the little guy had come through unscathed, surviving the accident and the brutal elements for nearly a week. Read and see more pictures on the CBC website.
It was three days of doctors, and insurance forms before the family was finally able to leave Tanya's father's home. There'd been no word of Obi, and worse yet if he was still out there, frigid, -20 F arctic air dropped down over the area. Thursday night, finally back home, Tanya decided to post a notice on Facebook about Obi. Everyone in the province had heard about the pileup, and now they all shared the story of the missing little dog. Word spread quickly, but the family was afraid that Obi hadn't survived the ordeal.
"To be honest, I posted in hopes of getting his body back so we could get some closure," she said.
Two days later, Saturday at 5 pm, just before sunset, a couple happened to be driving by the crash site. They scanned the edge of the woods, and something in the snow caught their attention. Could that be the missing dog? They stopped and got out to investigate. It was a little dog, but he ran into the woods as they attempted to get close to him. They called Tanya, a six-hour drive away. Within an hour, her husband Dean was on a plane. His flight landed near his father-in-law's home, and the two drove to the accident site, arriving in the dark a little more than 3 hours after the call. Their high hopes were bolstered when they found pawprints in the snow. They followed the tracks into the woods but lost them where they joined a snowmobile trail. Their hopes dwindled as time went by and the temperature dropped. Frustrated and cold, they went back to the truck. They phoned Tanya with the disappointing news but vowed to be back first thing in the morning.
After hanging up, Dean couldn't leave; he decided to go have one more quick look. Dean went back into the woods alone calling Obi's name. After only a few minutes of calling, he thought he heard something. He held still, listened, and called out again. A weak bark came back. His heart pounded as he repeated calling, waiting for the reply, and then shining his flashlight in the direction of the bark. And then Dean saw him. Covered in snow and ice, very weak and seemingly not able to move. But he'd found him!
Other than being very cold and hungry, the little guy had come through unscathed, surviving the accident and the brutal elements for nearly a week. Read and see more pictures on the CBC website.
"Kaiser! Where you been buddy?"
This lost dog story starts out in a small New England town called Ashby, on the northern edge of Massachusetts. And it started 8 months ago.
Tom Woolacott's family includes a couple of small kids and a large dog named Kaiser. Kaiser is a five-year-old,130 pound, King Shepherd. In July 2018, Woolacott hosted his brother's wedding at his home and arranged for Kaiser to stay at a friend's house for the day. Within hours, the friend realized that Kaiser had jumped over a 6-foot fence and was gone. For a month, Woolacott drove hundreds of miles, following sightings of Kaiser in nearby towns. It seemed that he always "just missed him." Over time, the sightings stopped. Five months passed. Then, in January, good fortune struck- a woman living 175 miles away, had her freezer quit working.
When the woman from Maine noticed her freezer stopped, she moved 160 pounds of frozen meat from her broken freezer out to her front porch (January in New England). The next day, half of the meat was gone. Not surprisingly, Kaiser kept coming back for weeks, and the woman kept feeding him, thinking she'd be able to befriend and catch him. Eventually, with help from Bethel Animal Control, Kaiser was captured and ended up at a nearby shelter in South Paris, Maine. Somehow, Kaiser ended up two states and 175 miles from home!
But with no microchip and no tags, it was up to social media. The shelter made a "found pet" post, and neighboring pet rescue groups relayed the information in ever-widening circles, making it as far as New Hampshire. But still not close enough for Wollacott to notice.
In mid-February, on the day before Kaiser would have been put up for adoption, something rather astounding happened. A woman from Massachusetts contacted the shelter. She said the dog wasn't hers, but she thought the dog they had was Kaiser. The caller was Woolacott's friend who had been keeping Kaiser on the day he escaped. The shelter tried calling the dog "Kaiser" and got an immediate reaction. She'd found him! Soon, Woolacott was on the phone and able to describe several unique characteristics that the shelter confirmed. He hopped in his truck the next morning and drove through 175 miles of snow to bring his boy home.
The reunion, far from home and 8 months later is quite something to watch. After being on his own for so long and then shuffled through the shelter system, it takes Kaiser a few seconds to realize who Woolacott is. But then, once the big tail starts going, the reunion is on. See more, including the reunion video on the USAToday site.
The Odds of Finding Your Lost Cat...
In a recent blog post, we discuss the odds of finding your lost cat, and what to do to increase them in your favor. Read more here.
Video Funny
When your tongue is like the sticky side of Velcro, you need to be careful what you do with it.
Not sure these Husky pups need boots. They aren't either.
Cute Pets from the Internets...
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